Microsoft just purchased Nokia's smartphone business, including
the rights to its patents, for ~ $7.2 billion.

How did the acquisition talks
begin, and how long did they take to finalize?

Although Microsoft has spent a
few years thinking about how to succeed in the smart phone
business, the acquisition talks began in January or February,
after the Mobile World Congress summit in Barcelona.

Early conversations weren't just about an acquisition. The two
companies explored a number of opportunities before the $7
billion deal was made.

"[Siilasmaa] wanted to make sure we exhausted all possibilities
since we were going to be partners in any event whether we did a
deal like this or a variety of other modifications to our
operating partnership," Ballmer told Topolsky. "I think that was
a valuable exercise in terms of really identifying what are the
key things for us to do to really accelerate our partnership."

Ballmer tells ATD's Ina Fried: "“We had a Plan A, a Plan B a Plan
C. And by the time we were done, we had A, A1, A-Prime, B, C, D,
E.”

The acquisition was finalized prior to Ballmer's retirement
announcement in August.

Ballmer will be stepping down
from his CEO position within the year. His successor has not yet
been selected, although Nokia's former CEO and Microsoft's
current EVP of Devices and Services, Stephen Elop, now looks like
the top candidate. Ballmer reached out to Elop and Siilasmaa
shortly before the announcement to make sure they wouldn't be
spooked.

In the end, the pair say a partial acquisition made the most
sense.

“We looked at many, many possibilities together," Baller tells
Fried. [We] ultimately took this one with us buying all of
Nokia’s phone business, becoming an innovation partner and
customer of [Nokia's mapping product] Here and licensing patents
from Nokia."